Office 2007 introduced a new graphics engine that lets you add special effects to text and graphics.  These effects have been expanded and enhanced in Office 2010.

Text Effects

To add special effects to text:

1. Select the text you want to change.
2. Click the Text Effects button in the Font group on the Home tab of the ribbon.



3. Click the effect you want, or select additional effects from the menus at the bottom (Outline, Shadow, Reflection and Glow).

Artistic Effects

Word 2010 includes a number of new ways to modify graphics in a document.  All of these options are in the Adjust group on the Picture Tools/Format tab of the Ribbon.

The options in this group are summarized below:

Microsoft Word 2007 and 2010 lets you create blog postings and publish them directly from Word. (Actually, I’m doing it right now!) Using Word is generally easier than most blogging software, which requires users to edit HTML code.

To create a blog posting from Word:

1. Click the Office button.
2. Select New, select New blog post, and then click the Create button (lower right corner).
3. Click the Register Now button in the dialog, and then select your Blog provider from the drop-down list.
4. Enter the appropriate information into the New Blogger Account dialog box.
5. Click the Picture Options button if you want to select a picture provider from the drop-down list.
   (If you don’t use a picture provider, select None-Don’t Upload Pictures.)
6. Type your blog posting, and click the Publish button on the Ribbon to publish it to the blog. (When you publish, Word will prompt you for your Username and Password.)

Students don’t realize how easy they have it these days…

Remember typing out a bibliography on a typewriter, only to make a mistake at the bottom of the page and have to type the whole darn thing over?  Or having to type the bibliography over because your professor required the Chicago style sheet and you used MLA?  No more.

Word 2007 includes a new bibliography feature that makes it easier than ever to manage sources and create a bibliography, according to the style rules you select.

As you conduct research, you can add each source to a master list of sources.  For each source, you’ll fill in the title, author, publication date, etc.  When you write the paper and quote one of your sources, you can insert a citation simply by selecting one of the sources from your list.  When you’re ready to create your bibliography, Word will create it automatically from the sources you entered.

If you often work with several docs open in Word, you’ll love this tip!

Hold down the SHIFT key when you click on the File menu. Close and Save will appear as Close All and Save All, allowing you to close or save all open files with one click!

(Note: If you select Close All, Word will still prompt you to save changes for each unsaved file.)

Word lets you add a Work menu to your Menu Bar that you can use to access frequently used documents. Although few people know about this Word feature, it can be quite useful.

To add the Work menu to the menu bar:

1. Select Tools | Customize, and click the Commands tab.
2. In the list of Categories , select Built-in Menus.
3. Select Work in the Commands box and drag it to the menu bar.



4. Click Close to close the Customize dialog box.

After you add the Work menu, you can easily add any open Word document to it.

To add the current document to the Work menu:

1. Select Work | Add to Work Menu.

To open a document on the Work menu:

1. Select the the document on the Work menu.

To remove a document from the Work menu:

1. Press CTRL+ALT+- (dash key).
2. Your cursor will look like a large, bold underscore.
3. On the Work menu, click the document you want to remove.

If Word flags words that you use frequently as misspelled, such as names or acronyms, you can add them to Word’s custom dictionary by right-clicking on the Word and selecting Add to dictionary.

You can also edit the dictionary directly. This is useful if you need to remove words from the dictionary that you previously added.

To edit the custom dictionary:

1. Select Tools | Options | Spelling & Grammar.
2. Click the Custom Dictionaries button.
3. Select the check box next to the dictionary you want to edit.



4. Click the Modify button.
5. To add a word, type it in the Word box, and then click Add.



6. To delete a word, select it from the list and click Delete.

By default, Word and Excel list the last four files you opened at the bottom of the File menu. You can increase the number of files on this list to nine by changing a program setting.

Here’s how:

1. Select Tools | Options.
2. Click the General tab.
3. Change the number in the Recently used file list to 9 entries.
4. Click OK.

Word 2002/2003 lets you select multiple noncontiguous items in a document.

Although this feature has been available in Excel for some time, it was not introduced in Word until ver. 2002, and is still available in ver. 2003.

For example, you can select the headings of two or more sections in a document, without selecting the text in between.

Here’s how:

1. Select the first item (word, sentence, heading, paragraph, etc.)
2. Hold down CTRL.
3. Select any additional items you want.

Do you need to add a Table of Contents (hereafter referrred to as TOC) to a document? It’s much easier than you think. And there’s certainly no need to type it out the long way.

However, there is something you must do before you create the TOC: Use heading styles throughout your document. To format text as a heading style, just select the text and then select the heading style (Heading 1, Heading 2, etc.) from the Style drop-down list (located to the left of the Font drop-down list–it probably says “Normal”).

After you have formatted everything in the document that you want to appear in the TOC as a heading style, move the insertion point to the top of the document (since this is probably where you want to put the TOC). Then select Insert | Reference | Index and Tables… The following dialog box will appear:

Make sure you have the Table of Contents tab selected. Add checks to the appropriate checkboxes if you want to show page numbers in the TOC (which you do–otherwise, what is the point of a TOC?), and if you want to right align the page numbers. Select the type of tab leader you want to connect the heading and the page number (usually a dotted line). Then select the format you want. Finally, tell Word how many heading style you want to include in the TOC. For example, you may have used Headings 1-5 in the document, but you may only want Headings 1-3 to show up in the TOC.

When you click OK, a TOC will be inserted at the insertion point.

Updating a Table of Contents

Great, you say, now that I have a spiffy TOC, what happens if I edit the document, add and delete text, and move sections to different pages?

No problem. Simply click into the TOC, and press the F9 function key on the top row of the keyboard. Word will display the following prompt:

Select the option you want. If you have inserted and/or deleted sections, select Update entire table; otherwise, you can just update page numbers. Word will regenerate the TOC, with the correct headings and page numbers.